I see by the advertisements that a new movie featuring Graflex equipment is coming to the theaters on September 22.

It is called "All the King's Men" starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, James Gandolfini and others.

Based on Robert Penn Warren's 1946 Pulitzer Prize winning fictionalized novel with Sean Penn staring as Willie Stark, an idealist in Louisana politics who rose to power and then fell due to corruption and greed (among other things), it appears to be based on the notorious real life Huey Pierce Long - "The Kingfish."

There was also another movie of the same name released in 1949 starring Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, so it appears that the story is at least worth re-telling.

From the short previews it shows a plethora of Graflex equipment being wielded by the press photographers of that bygone era, with the flashing of flash bulbs and so forth.

I will probably see the movie on the 22nd and will try to locate the older movie to see if it has any scenes with Graflex equipment also.

Pretty much any movie from the 1940s or even 1950s that showed "present day" press photographers working would have been rife with Graflex and similar equipment; Speed Graphics pretty much ruled the roost from 1940 until improved films and camera technology made medium format viable for newspaper and magazine photography in the late 1950s, and then did the same for 35 mm in the late 1960s.

_________________Is thirty-five years too long to wait for your first Speed?

Yeah, the movie shifted the time to the 50s. I don't remember when the Broderick Crawford version of the movie was supposed to have happened - nor do I remember when the book was supposed to have happened. Seems that I can't remember much anymore, but I did remember there were no top rangefinders in 1954. ha.

On 2006-10-05 08:45, paxety wrote:
I saw the movie - it supposedly takes place in 1954 - there were several scenes with top rangefinder Speeds or Crowns. I annoyed everyone around me by pointing out the error.